Yeah, it’s been long enough since I’ve watched them that I couldn’t unpack it all without a rewatch, but Walt had a lot of chances to keep things quietly churning or just quietly walk out with a lot of cash. Whether what Mike said is pinpoint correct, it’s definitely broadly correct, in that Walt kept engineering disasters they could have all just been making money. I also don’t buy the ‘Jesse is a hero for killing two drug dealers for selling to kids’ line or the ‘Jesse was an innocent victim of Gus’ line that follows from ‘of course he had to stop them selling to kids!’. His outrage doesn’t justify anything IMO when he’s perfectly willing to create an even stronger meth than was available before, in huge quantities, and make massive profits from it while it’s being sold widely, but draws the line at selling directly to kids. Vigilante action when your hands are otherwise clean has some justification, but ‘I’m going to be second-best meth cook ever and contribute to the epidemic of meth-related problems, but also I kill drug dealers who sell to kids’ just isn’t.
It doesn’t make sense for Howard to be driving a cab in Omaha anyway. He’s never had any connection to the area, and he is actually a lawyer with a valid law license, so even if HHM falls to pieces there’s no reason for him to end up out there. He’s got family ties to ABQ and much better things he could do there even if he falls to pieces. I’m pretty sure Gene is just being paranoid about the cab driver like he was about the big burly guy meeting a friend, or setting off the fire alarm near the trash cans, or about the police in the hospital.
But the whole project was done under the strictest security. No one besides a handful of Gus’s people even know there is a project. So there is no reputation to damage since no one even knows Gus hired any contractors, let alone what he does to them after the project is done.
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I didn’t interpret that Jimmy recognized the driver. I saw it as that Jimmy thought the *driver *recognized him. His Spidey-sense was tingling: “Have I been made?”
Maybe it was the Albuquerque air freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror.
If what you mean by Mike’s remark “doesn’t make sense,” I’ll grant that it wasn’t based on a rational assessment by Mike, or that there was some specific point in time in which “everything would have been OK,” since the initial problems were caused by other individuals like the two drug dealers who had Combo killed. But it’s not irrational for Mike to mostly blame Walt. Walt, after all, was the one who actually killed Fring, bringing the whole system tumbling down, regardless of his motivations. Jesse is a dumb kid whose offenses were mostly due to impulsiveness and failing to think things through. Walt, on the other hand, caused problems because of his extreme arrogance and egotism and Machiavellian manipulation of everybody else. Of course Mike is going to blame Walt more than Jesse.
That’s a business model that could work! Everyone knows that Hitman suits only need come in three sizes: big and menacing; scary big and menacing; and Huell.
Walter White: I liked it. I was good at it.
Kim Wexler: I like it. I’m good at it.
Hmmm. That’s not accidental.
Does it bother anyone else that Kim and Jimmy have no sexual chemistry whatsoever? I have never found them believable as a couple. They almost never touch each other. Their greeting kisses are like brother and sister. They live like roommates. It’s weird, and when they go their separate ways it won’t break either of their hearts.
I think the presumption about these European ‘we cater to criminal enterprises’ engineers is that they’ve left some sort of business structure back home: partners, employees, etc. And that there’s an informal criminal network that is related to jobs of this type. And when an engineer and his crew accept a job from Gus, even if the information available is limited, someone back home knows about it.
So Gus could be materially harmed if he killed off the engineer and workers, because word would get around that informal criminal network: don’t deal with this guy.
(It’s sort of the Donald Trump story, except that Gus is a much more honorable–and skilled–businessman, than is Trump.)
Yes. They found out about German Guy through a contact. The contact would know if he and the whole crew disappeared. This would not go well for Gus. Plus they might have another project in the future.
Kai, on the other hand, may be headed for a poor outcome. The boss knew that he was being out of line but assured Mike that he would focus when the job was being done. If he fucks up by compromising security to get some tail or something, everyone will understand if he doesn’t return home.
What I really like about them as a couple is that they are NOT madly, giddily in luv, grabbing each other’s gonads, giggling and going for quickies behind the dumpster, and sleeping exhausted, intertwined, on satin sheets. They are a very realistic couple like a billion other hard working couples. If you want to see panting drooling passion, there are limitless other shows featuring hot monkey sexx. These two are a pretty normal couple. Their affair is a normal one. And that is not the focus of the show anyway, the Kim and Jimmy Love Story.
Yeah, it’s like they’re married. 
And they did have hot monkey sex in one episode.
I think the interesting part about the Kai plot will not be that he fucks up and gets killed, which has been pretty well foreshadowed. It’s that it’ll be the first time that Mike kills for Gus. Mike won’t push that off to an underlying; he’ll be honor bound to do it himself. And that will mark a turning point in the Mike-Gus relationship, which is really the important part of all of this plot.
Dumb thing we all missed on the last page: No one has ever said that Gus was born in Chile. He came from Chile and did something there that impressed/scared the cartel enough that they didn’t kill him, but the idea that it was where he grew up is just supposition.
They’re not over-the-top passionate, they seem like a real couple with busy lives. They routinely kiss each other but aren’t always tongue kissing - like real couples that I know. And I’ve never lived with a roommate that I’d sleep in the same bed with, you seem to have a… different idea of what’s usual for roommates than I do. It’s very clear that they both care for each other and that going their seperate ways will be hard for both of them. FFS Jimmy just had to leave the room and fight down physical symptoms at the realization that they’re not going to have a law partnership, how can you say that it’s not going to hurt him when Kim ends up gone from his life?
I’m going to say again that I think the foreshadowing is too heavy handed and I don’t believe it, I think that Kai is going to end up like the letter from Chuck that seemed like it was going to be a major point and then was essentially nothing. If one of the Germans gets deliberately killed for doing something he shouldn’t (which seems likely) it won’t be Kai.
Plus even with HHM falling apart, Howard has money to fall back on (although did they mention a divorce?). It does seem unlikely that he’d need to drive a cab to pay the bills. And it’s too much of a coincidence for him to also end up in Omaha.
BTW, I was surprised how big the warehouse they were working in was. When we saw the commercial laundromat in Breaking Bad, it seemed a smaller space, but it was full of industrial washing machines and those big laundry bins. And I assume Mike will need to bring in heavy-duty construction equipment (jackhammers, a small earthmover, digging equipment, etc.).
It’s also clear that Kim’s attractions are, generally, not based on physical looks, but on the person’s intellect.
We saw that pretty explicitly in the opening flashback. Jimmy is there, and obviously smitten with Kim, but Kim almost totally ignores him once Chuck shows up, and Kim starts fan-girling about how brilliant Chuck was in winning that case via the power of obscure law references. And we see Jimmy realize that.
Kim has always liked Jimmy as a friend, and it was his getting his law degree and passing the bar that really made her respect him. But it was when she saw the Slippin’ Jimmy side of him that she really fell in love, when she realized he was just as smart as Chuck ever was, just in a different context.
Also, shes been around Hamlin for years, and despite him outshining both Chuck and Jimmy in the looks department, she’s never given him the time of day, because he’s ultimately just not that smart.
I think you’re confused. The warehouse we saw this week wasn’t where the work is being done, it’s off-site housing for the work crew. They’ll be bused back and forth to the laundromat site. The external view of the warehouse site makes it clear that it’s in a pretty isolated area, possibly where they have the Pollos’ warehouses.
I don’t think he does, actually. He didn’t have enough liquid assets to simply buy out Chuck, he had to take out loans to do it. And while his family is well-off, that’s based on a strong income from HHM and owning two large chunks of HHM (his and his father’s share), and I wouldn’t be surprised if his loans use shares of HHM as collateral. That means that HHM’s sinking fortunes reduces the value of his investments, may make his loans come due early, and cuts down his direct income, so he could well be in dire financial straights. I don’t think he’s likely to need to drive a cab to pay the bills, since he could still just be an ordinary lawyer and his personal reputation is unsullied, plus he’s not likely to be poor-person broke because he’s legally savvy enough to set things up to come through a bankruptcy reasonably well, but but they’ve definitely laid the groundwork for him to go bankrupt if they want to go that way.
I think the warehouse is just where they’re living, they’re actually going to ship over to the laundry at night to do the construction. It also sounded like the laundry may be active during the day (hence the need to work at night), but there could be other secrecy reasons for night work.
Yep. Real huge plot hole here. Maintaining secrecy over a period of months while transferring between two locations is pretty damn far-fetched. Oh well. Let it slide… :rolleyes: